Audrey Watters

Audrey Watters's Latest Posts

Brad Parbs Remember the agony of waiting for a Web site to load, before broadband was widely available? According to a recent survey, a lot of American schools and libraries are still living in that era. Only 35% of public libraries have broadband speeds between 1.5 Mbps and 10 Mbps (a rather broad range); 34.7% […]

Getty Schools that receive discounts for Internet access through the federal E-rate funding are required to implement a number of measures, like creating an Internet safety policy and filtering and blocking access to certain types of online content. To that end, The Children’s Internet Protection Act, CIPA, addresses concerns about the type of online materials […]

Startup Weekend EDU San Francisco Last weekend, at the Washington, DC Startup Weekend EDU, it was clear that teachers are starting to play a more important role in these intense entrepreneur-fests. For those unfamiliar with Startup Weekend, here’s the general idea: entrepreneurs have 54 hours — from Friday night until Sunday afternoon — to pitch […]

NASA In the spirit of boosting citizen science projects, we’re pointing to the increasing number of opportunities for volunteers — those with no formal scientific training — to encourage participation in real scientific research. These projects happen both on- and offline and volunteers are asked to assist with making observations and calculations alongside scientists. (Remember […]

The U.S. Senate has proclaimed today the third annual National Day on Writing, an event originally created by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) to promote the importance of writing — not just to those of us who make our living by writing, but to all of us in our everyday lives. This […]

Matt Biddulph Today, most of the education world is focusing on how No Child Left Behind might change with the reauthorization of ESEA — the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. But as the Senate Education committee prepares to mark up ESEA, another under-the-radar amendment is also being considered — one that has historical ties to […]

Getty Over the last few months, there has been increased interest in using text-messaging at school. Although many schools do still have strict policies that forbid using cell phones in class, more are exploring ways to use text-messaging as a communication tool to bridge home and school. There’s also been an explosion in new tech […]

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced Connect to Compete, a new non-profit initiative that brings private industry and the non-profit sector together to help expand broadband adoption and promote digital literacy. The initiative aims to help boost education, health and employment in disadvantaged communities in the U.S. and aims to address some of the obstacles to […]

TB Over the weekend, The New York Times published the second story in its series on “Grading the Digital School.” The first story in the series questioned the massive expenditures schools make on education technology, pointing to stagnant test scores as an indication that these investments might not be worth it. Last weekend’s story extends […]

B. Gilliard You’ve heard the stories: Cheating in Atlanta, Georgia. Cheating in Washington, DC. Cheating in Long Island, New York. Academic dishonesty, plagiarism, and cheating are hardly new. And as the history of the banking industry and baseball demonstrate, cheating scandals aren’t just limited to schools. With numerous incidents making headlines in recent months, however, […]

Summer break presents the perfect opportunity for students to dig into games and build skills that’ll reap huge rewards when they return in the fall. Game making can be one of the best ways to get students thinking creatively while cultivating useful technical literacies, and there’s a ton of absorbing tools that students won’t tire of over the long break. Here are three options to choose from depending on the type of technology students have at home.

For educators who are interested in using games for learning — specifically towards developing skills as they relate to the Common Core State Standards — here are five games students can enjoy and that we’ve found sync with standards.

The success and popularity of Minecraft in and out of classrooms is no surprise. It’s one of the best examples of the potential of learning with games because it embraces exploration, discovery, creation, collaboration, and problem-solving while allowing teachers to shepherd play toward any subject area. But Minecraft is not the only game of this kind. Take a look at some of these.